DALTON — The tercentenary committee, of which Reuben C. Pierce is chairman, is completing the work of erecting signs at various points about town, calling attention to places of historical interest. The signs are of wood, neatly constructed and lettered. The plan originated with Postmaster Walter L. Tower, a keen student of local history, and he was named chairman of the subcommittee in charge of this phase of the tercentenary activities.

At each of the main entrances to Dalton, at the Pittsfield city line and the Windsor and Hinsdale town lines, will be erected a large sign bearing the following inscription: “Massachusetts Bay Tercentenary; Dalton, originally known as Ashuelot Equivalent, Settled 1755; incorporated 1784; names of early settlers: Bardin, Bicknell, Brown, Burr, Cady, Carson, Cary, Chamberlin, Cleveland, Coogan, Crane, Ensign, Goodrich, Kittredge, Lawrence, Marsh, Merriam, Otis, Parks, Smith, Walker, Weston, Wiley, Williams.”

At Main Street Cemetery is a sign which points out the fact that just inside the cemetery gates is a boulder which marks the site of Dalton’s first meeting-house, erected in 1791. The building was a small one, and was replaced a few years later by a larger structure, the first Congregational church, erected on East Main Street in 1812.

Opposite the Union Block on Main Street is a sign stating that in 1801, Zenas Crane built the first paper mill in Dalton, on a site near the Old Berkshire mill. This little mill was the forerunner of today’s large, modern mills, each of which turns out every day nearly as much paper as was made in many weeks in the first mill, where each sheet was carefully made by hand.

At the foot of Walker hill on Main Street, another sign marks almost the exact spot on which once stood Walter Walker’s fulling mill, the first such plant in town. Fulling mills as a separate business are now extinct, but in colonial days they performed an important service. Cloth in those days was woven on hand looms at home, from yarn which was homespun from home-grown wool. After weaving, the cloth required shrinking and smoothing, difficult tasks for the home so the fulling mills did the work for housewives.

Another sign erected just west of Center bridge on Main Street, designates the various activities which took place in that section in the early days of the township. The industries of the town centered about that spot. There was a sawmill, a grist mill, a fulling mill and the town’s first general store.

This Story in History is selected from the archives by Jeannie Maschino, The Berkshire Eagle.

Jeannie Maschino is community news editor and librarian for The Berkshire Eagle. She has worked for the newspaper in various capacities since 1982 and joined the newsroom in 1989.

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